Pessimism Permeates Mideast Media on Talks By ETHAN BRONNER Many described it as political theater — dark suits, cordial handshakes and lofty speeches — offering little chance to end the conflict. Some Israelis focused on the increase in shootings of Jewish settlers by Hamas and the political weakness of the Palestinian president,Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinians worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had little intention of granting them what they consider their due — all of the occupied lands in a truly sovereign state. “The heart yearns for the success of this latest attempt at peacemaking,” wrote David Horovitz, editor of The Jerusalem Post.
“We are in for a long, long crisis,” he said. Many analysts focused on the Sept. 26 deadline, when Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank ends, as a likely crisis point. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly indicated that he will not extend the suspension, and Mr. Abbas has said that failure to extend it will be cause to end the talks. “West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours,” Mr. Barak said this week in the interview. “The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed-upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.” Those known to reject even the idea of these talks — Hamas among the Palestinians and the settlers among the Israelis — expressed confidence in their failure. The settlers said they were already building new homes in defiance of the construction freeze and the Hamas attacks. Ismail Ashqar, a Hamas official, said the entire land of Palestine, including what is today Israel, was “an Islamic endowment for all Muslims,” emphasizing that the Palestinian Authority and its negotiators “cannot give up any single piece of dust of its soil.”
Gaza: Militant Groups Promise More Attacks By FARES AKRAM Thirteen militant groups in Gaza vowed Thursday to step up attacks on Israeli targets to foil peace negotiations.
Abu Obaida, whose movement controls Gaza, said that the Gaza-based leaders of the armed groups met on Aug. 30. He said they included splinter groups from the rival Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, which holds sway in the West Bank.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for two drive-by shootings in the West Bank this week, which killed four Israeli settlers near Hebron and wounded two others near Ramallah.
September 2, 2010 Experts Fear Mideast Talks Are Too Ambitious By ISABEL KERSHNER “We should have a Plan B,” said Oded Eran, director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who led Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians from 1999 to 2000.
“If you do not accept the status quo — which I do not — and you cannot obtain an agreement on all the core issues,” Mr. Eran said, “then the alternative is to go for a partial solution while keeping the ultimate political objectives of both sides in mind.”
Support for this interim approach has come from surprising quarters. Yossi Beilin, a former leftist member of Parliament and government minister who was the architect of an unofficial 2003 blueprint for a final peace accord, told reporters in Jerusalem days before the summit meeting that he would advise President Obama “to change the game.”
Concerned that outright failure in the talks could deteriorate into violence, Mr. Beilin said it was preferable to aim for an interim agreement, otherwise “negotiations may be worse than no negotiations.”
The Palestinians reject the idea of partial or interim arrangements, worried that Israel will go no further. One of the transfers of control ofWest Bank territory agreed upon as part of the Oslo process in the 1990s was never carried out.
Today, Israel maintains full control over 60 percent of the West Bank. In 2005, it withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, and that enclave is now controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, wants a comprehensive final settlement that will establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem. He also wants a just solution for the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants — one that respects their demand for a right to return to their former homes in what is now Israel.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he wants an agreement that will mean the “end of the conflict and of claims on Israel” and that will ensure security and Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. In Washington, he said he was seeking a “historic compromise.”
But those urging a more modest approach argue that Mr. Netanyahu, the most conservative Israeli prime minister to have embarked on final status talks, is unlikely to offer more than his more centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert. In late 2008, Mr. Olmert proposed an Israeli withdrawal from about 93 percent of the West Bank and compensatory land swaps. Mr. Abbas, who did not accept that offer, is unlikely to settle for less.
A former defense minister and now a member of Parliament from the centrist Kadima Party, presented a plan for a Palestinian state with temporary borders on 50 to 60 percent of the West Bank, mainly in areas that are already under Palestinian control. It has been dismissed by analysts as not generous enough.
Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders By ISABEL KERSHNER and**MARK LANDLER** The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group, claimed responsibility for the attack — in which gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying two men and two women at a junction near the city of Hebron — and described it on its Arabic Web site as a “heroic operation.”
A senior Israeli official said that the West Bank attack, the deadliest on Israeli citizens in more than two years, would inevitably heighten the emphasis on Israel’s security in the negotiations. But Palestinian officials noted that the attack took place in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli security control, and where the Palestinian security forces have no responsibility and are not allowed to operate.
Settlers, many of whom have little faith in the Palestinians or the prospects of peace, were enraged by the attack. Tzviki Bar-Hai, the chairman of the South Mount Hebron settlers’ council, told Israel Radio, “For the past 100 years there has been a link between the Jewish people’s desire to live and the Arab people’s desire to kill us.” Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who led the Oslo peace process in the early and mid-1990s, said his philosophy was “to fight terror as if there were no negotiations and conduct the negotiations as if there was no terror.” Mr. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist in 1995.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, Mark Landler from Washington and Fares Akram from Gaza.
August 31, 2010 A Peace Plan Within Our Grasp By HOSNI MUBARAK
Washington
IT’S been 10 long years since the Palestinians and Israelis last came close to establishing a permanent peace, in January 2001 at Taba in Egypt. During my career in the Egyptian Air Force, I saw the tragic toll of war between the Arabs and Israel. As president of Egypt, I have endured many ups and downs in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Egypt’s decision to be the first Arab state to make peace with Israel claimed the life of my predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat. Ever since the day in 1981 that I witnessed his assassination by extremists, I have tried to turn the dream of a permanent peace in the Middle East into a reality.
Now, after a nearly two-year hiatus in direct negotiations, we are opening yet another chapter in this long history. Many claim that this new round of talks — which begins with meetings between President Obama; Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel; the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; King Abdullah of Jordan; and myself here on Wednesday — is doomed to fail like all the others.
However, President Obama’s determined involvement has revived our hopes for peace and we must seize this opportunity. The broad parameters of a permanent Palestinian-Israeli settlement are already clear: the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. Previous negotiations have already resolved many of the details on the final status of refugees, borders, Jerusalem and security.
The biggest obstacle that now stands in the way of success is psychological: the cumulative effect of years of violence and the expansion of Israeli settlements have led to a collapse of trust on both sides. For the talks to succeed, we must rebuild trust and a sense of security.
How do we do this?
First, we must safeguard the peace process from further outbreaks of violence. To that end Egypt stands ready to resume its efforts to resolve the many difficult issues surrounding Gaza: mediating a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, bringing an end to Israel’s blockade and fostering a reconciliation between Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank. All this is critical to achieving a two-state solution. The Palestinians cannot make peace with a house divided. If Gaza is excluded from the framework of peace, it will remain a source of conflict, undermining any final settlement.
For an Israeli-Palestinian peace to succeed, it must also be embedded in a broader regional peace between Israel and the Arab world. The Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by all Arab states, offers Israel peace and normalization in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab territory and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. But in the interim both sides must show that this dream is within reach. Arab nations should continue to demonstrate the seriousness of their peace initiative with steps that address the hopes and concerns of ordinary Israelis.
For its part, Israel should make no mistake: settlements and peace are incompatible, as they deepen the occupation that Palestinians seek to end. A complete halt to Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is critical if the negotiations are to succeed, starting with an extension of Israel’s moratorium on settlement-building, which expires this month.
For both sides trust can be built only on tangible security. Security, however, cannot be a justification for Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land, as it undermines the cardinal principle of land for peace. I recognize that Israel has legitimate security needs, needs that can be reconciled with the Palestinians’ just demand for a complete withdrawal from occupied territory. Egypt believes that the presence of an international force in the West Bank, to be stationed for a period to be agreed upon by the parties, could give both sides the confidence and security they seek.
Finally, Egypt stands ready to host the subsequent rounds of negotiations. Every major Palestinian-Israeli agreement has been reached with active Egyptian involvement, in close collaboration with the United States. The 2001 talks in Taba, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, were the closest that the two sides have ever come to an agreement to end the conflict. Let us pick up where we left off, and hope that the spirit of engagement that accompanied those last talks engenders success.
We live in a world that is suffering from the bitter lash of extremism. A permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians would bring the light of hope to the Middle East and to people everywhere. As someone who has witnessed both the ravages of war and the hope for peace, I appeal to all sides to make this new round of negotiations the one that succeeds. Hosni Mubarak is the president of Egypt.
August 31, 2010 You Ain’t Seen This Before By**THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN**
President Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before — taking on two Missions Impossible at the same time. That is, a simultaneous effort to heal the two most bitter divides in the Middle East: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shiite-Sunni conflict centered in Iraq. Give him his due. The guy’s got audacity. I’ll provide the hope. But kids, don’t try this at home.
Yet, if by some miracles the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that open in Washington on Thursday do eventually produce a two-state solution, and Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis do succeed in writing their own social contract on how to live together, one might be able to imagine a Middle East that breaks free from the debilitating grip of endless Arab-Israeli wars and autocratic Arab regimes.
President Obama deserves credit for helping to nurture these opportunities. But he, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the newly elected leaders of Iraq need to now raise their games to a whole new level to seize this moment — or their opponents will.
Precisely because so much is at stake, the forces of intolerance, extreme nationalism and religious obscurantism all over the Middle East will be going all out to make sure that both the Israeli and Iraqi peace processes fail.
The opponents want to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq fractured, so it never coheres into a multisectarian democracy that could be an example for other states in the region.
I hope that one of my personal rules about the Middle East is proved wrong — that in this region extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away.
Mr. Obama was right to keep to his troop-withdrawal schedule from Iraq. Iraqi politicians need to stand on their own. But this is tricky. The president will not be remembered for when we leave Iraq but for what happens after we leave. That is largely in Iraqi hands, but it is still very much in our interest. So we need to retain sufficient diplomatic, intelligence, Special Forces and Army training units there to promote a decent outcome.
Because all the extremists are now doubling down. Last week, insurgents aligned with Al Qaeda boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis. On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian president and his people would die. “All these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians,” Yosef said.
Trust me, this is just the throat-clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal. Even if Israel agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000 will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of Israel. Imagine when today’s Israeli Army, where the officer corps is increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.
None of this is a reason not to proceed. It is a reason to succeed. There is so much to hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match the hoped-for outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: the effort to build a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most important democracy project in the world today. If Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first time in modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only possible in Iraq, but everywhere in the region.
“Iraq is the Germany of the Middle East,” says Michael Young, opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star and author of a very original book about Lebanon, “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square.” “It is at the heart of the region — affecting all around it — and the country’s multi-ethnic, multisectarian population represents all the communities of the region. Right now, what is going on in Iraq represents all the worst trends in the region, but if you can make it work, it could represent the best.”
The late Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt. Mao said a revolution is not a dinner party, and neither is bringing revolutionary change to the Middle East. I hope the forces of moderation are up to it. The bad guys will be offering no timeouts. They know the stakes, and they will be going all the way.
August 30, 2010 Outlines Emerge of Future State in the West Bank By**ETHAN BRONNER**
RAMALLAH, West Bank — As preparations intensify for a Palestinian-Israeli summit meeting in Washington on Thursday, the crude outlines of a Palestinian state are emerging in the West Bank, with increasingly reliable security forces, a more disciplined government and a growing sense among ordinary citizens that they can count on basic services.
Personal checks, long shunned as being unredeemable, are now widely accepted. Traffic tickets are issued and paid, movie theaters are opening and public parks are packed with families late into the summer nights. Economic growth in the first quarter of this year was 11 percent over the same period in 2009, the International Monetary Fund says.
“I’ve never seen Nablus so alive,” Caesar Darwazeh, who owns a photography studio, said on Sunday night as throngs of people enjoyed balloons and popcorn, a four-wagon train taking merrymakers through the streets.
Of course, the West Bank remains occupied by Israel. It is filled with scores of Israeli settlements, some 10,000 Israeli troops and numerous roadblocks and checkpoints that render true ordinary life impossible for the area’s 2.5 million Palestinians.
The central question facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is under what circumstances Israel might yield its control over the bulk of this territory to the emerging Palestinian state apparatus.
Most analysts remain skeptical of such a deal emerging soon, given a history of failed promises — and entrenched interests on both sides that oppose even the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
There are few signs of a breakthrough. Mr. Abbas and his aides insist that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes in what is today Israel, which for many Israelis would be tantamount to ending the existence of the Jewish state.
Palestinian officials say their central demand at the start of the talks is for the current settlement-building moratorium to be extended. Mr. Netanyahu and his aides have so far rejected that.
A top Netanyahu aide, however, said that if Mr. Abbas accepted — even privately when the two leaders meet alone — an end to the conflict with Israel and its Jewish identity, “the whole conventional wisdom can change very quickly.”
And these talks, the first direct negotiations in nearly two years with 17 years of failed diplomatic efforts behind them, have one advantage that past rounds have lacked: a West Bank administration that to many Israelis and Palestinians alike has begun to resemble, tentatively, a functioning state.
A senior Israeli Army commander, speaking under army rules of anonymity, said security coordination with the Palestinian forces was better than it had ever been. Unlike the situation in 2000, he said, when Washington-sponsored peace talks failed and the West Bank exploded in violence, the area is stable because of both its economic growth and a strong security situation.
“We probably have a year of stability if that happens,” he said of the prospect of failed negotiations. As much as he praised his Palestinian colleagues, however, he insisted that stability, for now, required an Israeli military presence.
Israeli troops leave security in the cities to the Palestinians during the day. But the commander said that they carried out four or five operations a night — down from a dozen a year ago — and that without those actions the situation would deteriorate: armed groups fromHamas and others would attack Israelis.
The commander noted that while there could be no long-term stability without a political deal, once the talks start, stability will be linked to them. If they fail, those among Jewish settlers and Palestinians who promote violence could take steps to disrupt the talks or exploit a sense of defeat, he said.
He said that Israel could remove more checkpoints and Palestinian economic growth could continue, “but anyone who thinks this will be enough to keep the area stable over the long term is wrong.”
He added that unless and until Israel hands over responsibility to the Palestinian forces, Israeli forces could not reduce their nightly interventions.
The Palestinian security chief, Diab el-Ali, rejected that in a recent interview, saying that the Israeli raids were an embarrassment and that he wanted them to stop. He said the Palestinians were capable of providing full security.
A Western security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly, said Israeli interventions and troop numbers could and should be cut further. But he thought that the Palestinian forces, while making progress, were not yet able to take control.
A main challenge facing the Palestinian Authority is Hamas, the Islamist group that rejects Israel’s existence and controls Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live. Hamas and Mr. Abbas’s more secular Fatah party are fierce rivals, and the prospect of reconciliation between them seems low. Hamas followers in the West Bank could play the part of spoilers, although the Palestinian and Israeli security forces work to keep them on the defensive.
The American notion is that if talks with Mr. Abbas are successful, he will gain political strength as the deal is put into effect, and that strength could ultimately be used to return his party to power in Gaza. Israelis remain skeptical, however.
Much of the credit for the positive changes in the West Bank go to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, who is halfway through a two-year plan to build institutions and infrastructure for a Palestinian state. In the past year, he has opened 34 schools and 44 housing complexes, planted 370,000 trees and increased tax revenue by 20 percent.
“We have had 11 governments since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and we never got anything from any of them until this one,” remarked Ahmad Douqan, a leader in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. “People in the camp look at Salam as someone who, more than anyone else, works for them.”
Mr. Fayyad is imposing discipline on his bloated bureaucracy, taking away free cars and cellphones from officials. He has reduced the authority’s dependence on outside budgetary aid, from $1.8 billion in 2008 to a projected $1.2 billion in 2010, according to Oussama Kanaan, head of the International Monetary Fund mission to the West Bank and Gaza.
“The Palestinian Authority is determined to follow the path of fiscal consolidation with a view to substantially reducing reliance on foreign aid for government expenditures,” Mr. Fayyad said at a news briefing on Monday.
Mr. Kanaan said the goal for 2011 was to bring the dependence below $1 billion. “The trend is good,” he said in an interview. “Due to the reforms, there is no case to be made for withholding aid. The situation is very different from three years ago.” Isabel Kershner and Khaled Abu-Akr contributed reporting.
August 25, 2010 How to Handle Hamas By DANIEL BYMAN
The biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the emergence of Hamas as the de facto government of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians reside. Peace talks can begin with Hamas on the sidelines, but they cannot finish if Hamas refuses to play ball.
Hamas has proved that it has the means to disrupt peace talks with rocket and mortar strikes, shootings of Israeli soldiers and agricultural workers near the Gaza border, and the kidnapping of personnel from the Israel Defense Forces. But it can also undermine peace talks without using violence.
Hamas can allow other terrorist groups to operate from Gaza and claim impotence or ignorance. It can also stymie talks politically. Hamas regularly argues that the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose power base is in the West Bank, is selling out the Palestinian cause. This makes it harder for Abbas to entertain concessions to Israel, particularly if they involve no immediate quid pro quo from Israel.
In the meantime, Israel, Egypt and the international community have put Gaza under siege to isolate and weaken Hamas, ideally leading to its overthrow or collapse. Israel, however, has tried to coerce Hamas without causing mass starvation — a difficult balance. Although Israeli policies keep Gaza near the brink, Hamas knows Israel will not let the Strip go over the cliff.
This is small comfort to Gazans. Aid agencies now put Gaza’s poverty rate at 80 percent, and the world lays the blame for this suffering at Israel’s feet. Hamas, despite its aggressive and repressive agenda, is successfully portraying itself as a victim of Israeli cruelty and violence.
The siege of Gaza has failed on another level: It has not crippled Hamas. Today, Hamas has a monopoly on the use of force in the Gaza Strip, and its political clout among Palestinians has grown at the expense of moderates such as Abbas. The siege has increased the importance of the social services that it provides and it also taxes the goods smuggled through tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Hamas has found it easier to raise money from Iran, which is eager to attach its name to such a high-profile and popular anti-Israel group.
Some Israelis believe that the alternative to the siege is to confront Hamas head-on, removing it from power by reoccupying Gaza and forcing it underground. But that strategy would lead Israel into a quagmire. And occupying Gaza again would hurt Israel’s relations with the United States, the international community and the moderate Palestinian leadership of the West Bank.
If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization’s decision-making calculus — a process that will require both incentives and threats.
One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.
In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.
Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.
Palestinian moderates would rightly complain that Israel was rewarding violence. And if Gaza’s economy improved, the contrast between living conditions there and living conditions in the West Bank would become less stark, which would hurt Abbas politically. In order to offset any political gains Hamas might make, the international community should encourage efforts to provide law and order, reduce corruption, and otherwise build a state in the West Bank. This would help make Abbas’ government a true rival to Hamas when it came to governance.
Formalizing the cease-fire with Hamas would raise the question of whether Israel and moderate Palestinians were simply postponing an inevitable fight and allowing the enemy to get stronger. However, if the rocket attacks from Gaza resumed or if credible evidence emerged that Hamas was dramatically increasing its military capabilities, Israel would have a strong case for resuming the siege in a more comprehensive way or using force. The international community, therefore, must support not only the idea of formalizing the cease-fire but also Israel’s right to retaliate militarily if, despite Israel’s concessions, Hamas returned to violence. Daniel Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A longer version of this article will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Tribune Media Services
Pessimism Permeates Mideast Media on Talks
By ETHAN BRONNER
Many described it as political theater — dark suits, cordial handshakes and lofty speeches — offering little chance to end the conflict.
Some Israelis focused on the increase in shootings of Jewish settlers by Hamas and the political weakness of the Palestinian president,Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinians worried that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had little intention of granting them what they consider their due — all of the occupied lands in a truly sovereign state.
“The heart yearns for the success of this latest attempt at peacemaking,” wrote David Horovitz, editor of The Jerusalem Post.
“We are in for a long, long crisis,” he said.
Many analysts focused on the Sept. 26 deadline, when Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank ends, as a likely crisis point. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly indicated that he will not extend the suspension, and Mr. Abbas has said that failure to extend it will be cause to end the talks.
“West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours,” Mr. Barak said this week in the interview. “The Arab neighborhoods in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed-upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.”
Those known to reject even the idea of these talks — Hamas among the Palestinians and the settlers among the Israelis — expressed confidence in their failure. The settlers said they were already building new homes in defiance of the construction freeze and the Hamas attacks.
Ismail Ashqar, a Hamas official, said the entire land of Palestine, including what is today Israel, was “an Islamic endowment for all Muslims,” emphasizing that the Palestinian Authority and its negotiators “cannot give up any single piece of dust of its soil.”
Gaza: Militant Groups Promise More Attacks
By FARES AKRAM
Thirteen militant groups in Gaza vowed Thursday to step up attacks on Israeli targets to foil peace negotiations.
Abu Obaida, whose movement controls Gaza, said that the Gaza-based leaders of the armed groups met on Aug. 30. He said they included splinter groups from the rival Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, which holds sway in the West Bank.
Hamas has claimed responsibility for two drive-by shootings in the West Bank this week, which killed four Israeli settlers near Hebron and wounded two others near Ramallah.
September 2, 2010
Experts Fear Mideast Talks Are Too Ambitious
By ISABEL KERSHNER
“We should have a Plan B,” said Oded Eran, director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who led Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians from 1999 to 2000.
“If you do not accept the status quo — which I do not — and you cannot obtain an agreement on all the core issues,” Mr. Eran said, “then the alternative is to go for a partial solution while keeping the ultimate political objectives of both sides in mind.”
Support for this interim approach has come from surprising quarters. Yossi Beilin, a former leftist member of Parliament and government minister who was the architect of an unofficial 2003 blueprint for a final peace accord, told reporters in Jerusalem days before the summit meeting that he would advise President Obama “to change the game.”
Concerned that outright failure in the talks could deteriorate into violence, Mr. Beilin said it was preferable to aim for an interim agreement, otherwise “negotiations may be worse than no negotiations.”
The Palestinians reject the idea of partial or interim arrangements, worried that Israel will go no further. One of the transfers of control ofWest Bank territory agreed upon as part of the Oslo process in the 1990s was never carried out.
Today, Israel maintains full control over 60 percent of the West Bank. In 2005, it withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, and that enclave is now controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, wants a comprehensive final settlement that will establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem. He also wants a just solution for the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants — one that respects their demand for a right to return to their former homes in what is now Israel.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he wants an agreement that will mean the “end of the conflict and of claims on Israel” and that will ensure security and Palestinian recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. In Washington, he said he was seeking a “historic compromise.”
But those urging a more modest approach argue that Mr. Netanyahu, the most conservative Israeli prime minister to have embarked on final status talks, is unlikely to offer more than his more centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert. In late 2008, Mr. Olmert proposed an Israeli withdrawal from about 93 percent of the West Bank and compensatory land swaps. Mr. Abbas, who did not accept that offer, is unlikely to settle for less.
A former defense minister and now a member of Parliament from the centrist Kadima Party, presented a plan for a Palestinian state with temporary borders on 50 to 60 percent of the West Bank, mainly in areas that are already under Palestinian control. It has been dismissed by analysts as not generous enough.
Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders
By ISABEL KERSHNER and **MARK LANDLER**
The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group, claimed responsibility for the attack — in which gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying two men and two women at a junction near the city of Hebron — and described it on its Arabic Web site as a “heroic operation.”
A senior Israeli official said that the West Bank attack, the deadliest on Israeli citizens in more than two years, would inevitably heighten the emphasis on Israel’s security in the negotiations. But Palestinian officials noted that the attack took place in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli security control, and where the Palestinian security forces have no responsibility and are not allowed to operate.
Settlers, many of whom have little faith in the Palestinians or the prospects of peace, were enraged by the attack. Tzviki Bar-Hai, the chairman of the South Mount Hebron settlers’ council, told Israel Radio, “For the past 100 years there has been a link between the Jewish people’s desire to live and the Arab people’s desire to kill us.” Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who led the Oslo peace process in the early and mid-1990s, said his philosophy was “to fight terror as if there were no negotiations and conduct the negotiations as if there was no terror.” Mr. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist in 1995.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, Mark Landler from Washington and Fares Akram from Gaza.
August 31, 2010
A Peace Plan Within Our Grasp
By HOSNI MUBARAK
Washington
IT’S been 10 long years since the Palestinians and Israelis last came close to establishing a permanent peace, in January 2001 at Taba in Egypt. During my career in the Egyptian Air Force, I saw the tragic toll of war between the Arabs and Israel. As president of Egypt, I have endured many ups and downs in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Egypt’s decision to be the first Arab state to make peace with Israel claimed the life of my predecessor, Anwar el-Sadat. Ever since the day in 1981 that I witnessed his assassination by extremists, I have tried to turn the dream of a permanent peace in the Middle East into a reality.
Now, after a nearly two-year hiatus in direct negotiations, we are opening yet another chapter in this long history. Many claim that this new round of talks — which begins with meetings between President Obama; Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel; the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; King Abdullah of Jordan; and myself here on Wednesday — is doomed to fail like all the others.
However, President Obama’s determined involvement has revived our hopes for peace and we must seize this opportunity. The broad parameters of a permanent Palestinian-Israeli settlement are already clear: the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. Previous negotiations have already resolved many of the details on the final status of refugees, borders, Jerusalem and security.
The biggest obstacle that now stands in the way of success is psychological: the cumulative effect of years of violence and the expansion of Israeli settlements have led to a collapse of trust on both sides. For the talks to succeed, we must rebuild trust and a sense of security.
How do we do this?
First, we must safeguard the peace process from further outbreaks of violence. To that end Egypt stands ready to resume its efforts to resolve the many difficult issues surrounding Gaza: mediating a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, bringing an end to Israel’s blockade and fostering a reconciliation between Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank. All this is critical to achieving a two-state solution. The Palestinians cannot make peace with a house divided. If Gaza is excluded from the framework of peace, it will remain a source of conflict, undermining any final settlement.
For an Israeli-Palestinian peace to succeed, it must also be embedded in a broader regional peace between Israel and the Arab world. The Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by all Arab states, offers Israel peace and normalization in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab territory and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. But in the interim both sides must show that this dream is within reach. Arab nations should continue to demonstrate the seriousness of their peace initiative with steps that address the hopes and concerns of ordinary Israelis.
For its part, Israel should make no mistake: settlements and peace are incompatible, as they deepen the occupation that Palestinians seek to end. A complete halt to Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is critical if the negotiations are to succeed, starting with an extension of Israel’s moratorium on settlement-building, which expires this month.
For both sides trust can be built only on tangible security. Security, however, cannot be a justification for Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land, as it undermines the cardinal principle of land for peace. I recognize that Israel has legitimate security needs, needs that can be reconciled with the Palestinians’ just demand for a complete withdrawal from occupied territory. Egypt believes that the presence of an international force in the West Bank, to be stationed for a period to be agreed upon by the parties, could give both sides the confidence and security they seek.
Finally, Egypt stands ready to host the subsequent rounds of negotiations. Every major Palestinian-Israeli agreement has been reached with active Egyptian involvement, in close collaboration with the United States. The 2001 talks in Taba, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, were the closest that the two sides have ever come to an agreement to end the conflict. Let us pick up where we left off, and hope that the spirit of engagement that accompanied those last talks engenders success.
We live in a world that is suffering from the bitter lash of extremism. A permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians would bring the light of hope to the Middle East and to people everywhere. As someone who has witnessed both the ravages of war and the hope for peace, I appeal to all sides to make this new round of negotiations the one that succeeds.
Hosni Mubarak is the president of Egypt.
August 31, 2010
You Ain’t Seen This Before
By **THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN**
President Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before — taking on two Missions Impossible at the same time. That is, a simultaneous effort to heal the two most bitter divides in the Middle East: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shiite-Sunni conflict centered in Iraq. Give him his due. The guy’s got audacity. I’ll provide the hope. But kids, don’t try this at home.
Yet, if by some miracles the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that open in Washington on Thursday do eventually produce a two-state solution, and Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis do succeed in writing their own social contract on how to live together, one might be able to imagine a Middle East that breaks free from the debilitating grip of endless Arab-Israeli wars and autocratic Arab regimes.
President Obama deserves credit for helping to nurture these opportunities. But he, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the newly elected leaders of Iraq need to now raise their games to a whole new level to seize this moment — or their opponents will.
Precisely because so much is at stake, the forces of intolerance, extreme nationalism and religious obscurantism all over the Middle East will be going all out to make sure that both the Israeli and Iraqi peace processes fail.
The opponents want to destroy the idea of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, so Israel will be stuck with an apartheid-like, democracy-sapping, permanent occupation of the West Bank. And they want to destroy the idea of a one-state solution for Iraqis and keep Iraq fractured, so it never coheres into a multisectarian democracy that could be an example for other states in the region.
I hope that one of my personal rules about the Middle East is proved wrong — that in this region extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away.
Mr. Obama was right to keep to his troop-withdrawal schedule from Iraq. Iraqi politicians need to stand on their own. But this is tricky. The president will not be remembered for when we leave Iraq but for what happens after we leave. That is largely in Iraqi hands, but it is still very much in our interest. So we need to retain sufficient diplomatic, intelligence, Special Forces and Army training units there to promote a decent outcome.
Because all the extremists are now doubling down. Last week, insurgents aligned with Al Qaeda boasted of killing 56 innocent Iraqis. On Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen murdered four West Bank Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman; Hamas proudly claimed credit. In Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who heads the largest ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, used his Shabbat sermon to declare that he hoped the Palestinian president and his people would die. “All these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians,” Yosef said.
Trust me, this is just the throat-clearing and gun-cleaning. Wait until we have a deal. Even if Israel agrees to swap land with the Palestinians so that 80 percent of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank can stay put, it will mean that 60,000 will still have to be removed. It took Israel 55,000 soldiers to remove 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which was never part of the Land of Israel. Imagine when today’s Israeli Army, where the officer corps is increasingly drawn from religious Zionists who support the settler movement, is called on to remove settlers from the West Bank.
None of this is a reason not to proceed. It is a reason to succeed. There is so much to hate about the Iraq war. The costs will never match the hoped-for outcome, but that outcome remains hugely important: the effort to build a decent, consensual government in Iraq is the most important democracy project in the world today. If Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites can actually write a social contract for the first time in modern Arab history, it means that viable democracy is not only possible in Iraq, but everywhere in the region.
“Iraq is the Germany of the Middle East,” says Michael Young, opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star and author of a very original book about Lebanon, “The Ghosts of Martyrs Square.” “It is at the heart of the region — affecting all around it — and the country’s multi-ethnic, multisectarian population represents all the communities of the region. Right now, what is going on in Iraq represents all the worst trends in the region, but if you can make it work, it could represent the best.”
The late Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin used to say he would pursue peace with the Palestinians as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. That dual approach is one that Iraqi, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli moderates are all going to have to adopt. Mao said a revolution is not a dinner party, and neither is bringing revolutionary change to the Middle East. I hope the forces of moderation are up to it. The bad guys will be offering no timeouts. They know the stakes, and they will be going all the way.
August 30, 2010
Outlines Emerge of Future State in the West Bank
By **ETHAN BRONNER**
RAMALLAH, West Bank — As preparations intensify for a Palestinian-Israeli summit meeting in Washington on Thursday, the crude outlines of a Palestinian state are emerging in the West Bank, with increasingly reliable security forces, a more disciplined government and a growing sense among ordinary citizens that they can count on basic services.
Personal checks, long shunned as being unredeemable, are now widely accepted. Traffic tickets are issued and paid, movie theaters are opening and public parks are packed with families late into the summer nights. Economic growth in the first quarter of this year was 11 percent over the same period in 2009, the International Monetary Fund says.
“I’ve never seen Nablus so alive,” Caesar Darwazeh, who owns a photography studio, said on Sunday night as throngs of people enjoyed balloons and popcorn, a four-wagon train taking merrymakers through the streets.
Of course, the West Bank remains occupied by Israel. It is filled with scores of Israeli settlements, some 10,000 Israeli troops and numerous roadblocks and checkpoints that render true ordinary life impossible for the area’s 2.5 million Palestinians.
The central question facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is under what circumstances Israel might yield its control over the bulk of this territory to the emerging Palestinian state apparatus.
Most analysts remain skeptical of such a deal emerging soon, given a history of failed promises — and entrenched interests on both sides that oppose even the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
There are few signs of a breakthrough. Mr. Abbas and his aides insist that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes in what is today Israel, which for many Israelis would be tantamount to ending the existence of the Jewish state.
Palestinian officials say their central demand at the start of the talks is for the current settlement-building moratorium to be extended. Mr. Netanyahu and his aides have so far rejected that.
A top Netanyahu aide, however, said that if Mr. Abbas accepted — even privately when the two leaders meet alone — an end to the conflict with Israel and its Jewish identity, “the whole conventional wisdom can change very quickly.”
And these talks, the first direct negotiations in nearly two years with 17 years of failed diplomatic efforts behind them, have one advantage that past rounds have lacked: a West Bank administration that to many Israelis and Palestinians alike has begun to resemble, tentatively, a functioning state.
A senior Israeli Army commander, speaking under army rules of anonymity, said security coordination with the Palestinian forces was better than it had ever been. Unlike the situation in 2000, he said, when Washington-sponsored peace talks failed and the West Bank exploded in violence, the area is stable because of both its economic growth and a strong security situation.
“We probably have a year of stability if that happens,” he said of the prospect of failed negotiations. As much as he praised his Palestinian colleagues, however, he insisted that stability, for now, required an Israeli military presence.
Israeli troops leave security in the cities to the Palestinians during the day. But the commander said that they carried out four or five operations a night — down from a dozen a year ago — and that without those actions the situation would deteriorate: armed groups fromHamas and others would attack Israelis.
The commander noted that while there could be no long-term stability without a political deal, once the talks start, stability will be linked to them. If they fail, those among Jewish settlers and Palestinians who promote violence could take steps to disrupt the talks or exploit a sense of defeat, he said.
He said that Israel could remove more checkpoints and Palestinian economic growth could continue, “but anyone who thinks this will be enough to keep the area stable over the long term is wrong.”
He added that unless and until Israel hands over responsibility to the Palestinian forces, Israeli forces could not reduce their nightly interventions.
The Palestinian security chief, Diab el-Ali, rejected that in a recent interview, saying that the Israeli raids were an embarrassment and that he wanted them to stop. He said the Palestinians were capable of providing full security.
A Western security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly, said Israeli interventions and troop numbers could and should be cut further. But he thought that the Palestinian forces, while making progress, were not yet able to take control.
A main challenge facing the Palestinian Authority is Hamas, the Islamist group that rejects Israel’s existence and controls Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live. Hamas and Mr. Abbas’s more secular Fatah party are fierce rivals, and the prospect of reconciliation between them seems low. Hamas followers in the West Bank could play the part of spoilers, although the Palestinian and Israeli security forces work to keep them on the defensive.
The American notion is that if talks with Mr. Abbas are successful, he will gain political strength as the deal is put into effect, and that strength could ultimately be used to return his party to power in Gaza. Israelis remain skeptical, however.
Much of the credit for the positive changes in the West Bank go to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, who is halfway through a two-year plan to build institutions and infrastructure for a Palestinian state. In the past year, he has opened 34 schools and 44 housing complexes, planted 370,000 trees and increased tax revenue by 20 percent.
“We have had 11 governments since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and we never got anything from any of them until this one,” remarked Ahmad Douqan, a leader in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus. “People in the camp look at Salam as someone who, more than anyone else, works for them.”
Mr. Fayyad is imposing discipline on his bloated bureaucracy, taking away free cars and cellphones from officials. He has reduced the authority’s dependence on outside budgetary aid, from $1.8 billion in 2008 to a projected $1.2 billion in 2010, according to Oussama Kanaan, head of the International Monetary Fund mission to the West Bank and Gaza.
“The Palestinian Authority is determined to follow the path of fiscal consolidation with a view to substantially reducing reliance on foreign aid for government expenditures,” Mr. Fayyad said at a news briefing on Monday.
Mr. Kanaan said the goal for 2011 was to bring the dependence below $1 billion. “The trend is good,” he said in an interview. “Due to the reforms, there is no case to be made for withholding aid. The situation is very different from three years ago.”
Isabel Kershner and Khaled Abu-Akr contributed reporting.
August 25, 2010
How to Handle Hamas
By DANIEL BYMAN
The biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the emergence of Hamas as the de facto government of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians reside. Peace talks can begin with Hamas on the sidelines, but they cannot finish if Hamas refuses to play ball.
Hamas has proved that it has the means to disrupt peace talks with rocket and mortar strikes, shootings of Israeli soldiers and agricultural workers near the Gaza border, and the kidnapping of personnel from the Israel Defense Forces. But it can also undermine peace talks without using violence.
Hamas can allow other terrorist groups to operate from Gaza and claim impotence or ignorance. It can also stymie talks politically. Hamas regularly argues that the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose power base is in the West Bank, is selling out the Palestinian cause. This makes it harder for Abbas to entertain concessions to Israel, particularly if they involve no immediate quid pro quo from Israel.
In the meantime, Israel, Egypt and the international community have put Gaza under siege to isolate and weaken Hamas, ideally leading to its overthrow or collapse. Israel, however, has tried to coerce Hamas without causing mass starvation — a difficult balance. Although Israeli policies keep Gaza near the brink, Hamas knows Israel will not let the Strip go over the cliff.
This is small comfort to Gazans. Aid agencies now put Gaza’s poverty rate at 80 percent, and the world lays the blame for this suffering at Israel’s feet. Hamas, despite its aggressive and repressive agenda, is successfully portraying itself as a victim of Israeli cruelty and violence.
The siege of Gaza has failed on another level: It has not crippled Hamas. Today, Hamas has a monopoly on the use of force in the Gaza Strip, and its political clout among Palestinians has grown at the expense of moderates such as Abbas. The siege has increased the importance of the social services that it provides and it also taxes the goods smuggled through tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Hamas has found it easier to raise money from Iran, which is eager to attach its name to such a high-profile and popular anti-Israel group.
Some Israelis believe that the alternative to the siege is to confront Hamas head-on, removing it from power by reoccupying Gaza and forcing it underground. But that strategy would lead Israel into a quagmire. And occupying Gaza again would hurt Israel’s relations with the United States, the international community and the moderate Palestinian leadership of the West Bank.
If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization’s decision-making calculus — a process that will require both incentives and threats.
One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.
In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.
Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.
Palestinian moderates would rightly complain that Israel was rewarding violence. And if Gaza’s economy improved, the contrast between living conditions there and living conditions in the West Bank would become less stark, which would hurt Abbas politically. In order to offset any political gains Hamas might make, the international community should encourage efforts to provide law and order, reduce corruption, and otherwise build a state in the West Bank. This would help make Abbas’ government a true rival to Hamas when it came to governance.
Formalizing the cease-fire with Hamas would raise the question of whether Israel and moderate Palestinians were simply postponing an inevitable fight and allowing the enemy to get stronger. However, if the rocket attacks from Gaza resumed or if credible evidence emerged that Hamas was dramatically increasing its military capabilities, Israel would have a strong case for resuming the siege in a more comprehensive way or using force. The international community, therefore, must support not only the idea of formalizing the cease-fire but also Israel’s right to retaliate militarily if, despite Israel’s concessions, Hamas returned to violence.
Daniel Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A longer version of this article will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.
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